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Contra Mundum: Religion and Violence

June 1st, 2011 by Matt

On 1 May 2011 the world received the news that Osama Bin Laden was dead; gunned down in Pakistan by an elite team of US Navy Seals. Even before his death Bin Laden had become a legendary persona. Not only was he a terrorist leader responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocents but he functioned as a contemporary paradigm of the fanatical religious nutter who promotes hatred, violence and intolerance – much like the symbol Adolf Hitler was to earlier generations.

Osama Bin LadenThe 9/11 terrorist attacks reinvigorated a fear that has lain dormant in the western psyche since at least the 17th century. This fear is encapsulated in an objection to belief in God known as the argument from historical atrocities. Many critics of religion refer to the religious wars that tore Europe apart during the 17th century, citing events such as the Inquisition and Crusades — although lately the Taliban have been the image of choice.

Recently, whilst debating the viability of religious morality at the University of Notre Dame, best-selling author Sam Harris repeatedly cited the Taliban as a representative example of theological ethics. One need not read far into the literature of contemporary free thinkers to uncover this line of argument. Consider Jim Peron of the Institute for Liberal Values:

“To admit religion into the “public arena” is “dangerous.” And long term the results will be just as bloody and violent as they were in the past. … To put religion into that sector is to ignore centuries of history and return to the conflict-ridden, bloody world of the Dark Ages.”

Peron went on to refer to common motifs of the Inquisition: “crazy Puritans”, Servetus’ execution in Calvin’s Geneva and so on. Similar themes abound in the writings of Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens. The citation of historical cases is not in itself an argument so it is hard to discern the exact objection here. It appears to consist of two claims. Firstly, that some people who believe in God have committed atrocities against other people. Secondly, that if people who hold a belief commit atrocities then that belief is either false or should be avoided by liberal-minded people.

Historians Ronald Numbers and David Lindberg point to recent research having discredited the portrayal of the early Middle Ages as “the Dark Ages” brought about by Christianity. Similarly, research into Inquisition archives reveal that while such tribunals did exist, many popular beliefs are based on embellishment, exaggeration and propaganda rather than a sober assessment of facts. The picture of the Inquisition that emerges from these studies is significantly more benign than has popularly been thought. Similarly, historian Leland Ryken’s studies on the Puritans have questioned many of the popular stereotypes Peron referred to.

Take Peron’s allusion to the execution of Servetus. In his study on the life of Calvin, Oxford Theologian Alister McGrath argues that Calvin’s role in Servetus’ execution has been greatly exaggerated and contends that such heresy prosecutions were not typical in Geneva contrary to the image popularly peddled by rationalists. McGrath has also relentlessly exposed several cases of outright distortion and myth perpetuated about the so-called “dictator” of Geneva. This is not to say that atrocities did not occur, nor that such atrocities should be justified, but it is important to be accurate and fair. The evidence suggests that much of what people believe today about religious history is based on discredited 19th century rationalist propaganda stereotypes and consequent cultural prejudice.

Perhaps more interesting is the second claim. While this claim is seldom made explicit, something like it is necessary if the existence of atrocities entails that belief in God is false or that religious belief and practice should be avoided.

Philosopher Glenn Peoples provides several counter examples to this claim. The belief that the atom could be split is one that has been used to kill thousands of people yet that belief is true and it is an important scientific discovery. The belief that theft is wrong has, in the past, led to the lynching of thieves. Does this show that theft is not really wrong and we should not oppose it?

Other examples illustrate the absurdity of this claim. The “reign of terror” during the French Revolution was justified by appeals to liberty, equality, fraternity and the rights of humankind; one victim of the guillotine famously remarked, “Oh, Liberty, what crimes are committed in your name”. Millions have been slaughtered by appeals to the greater good of society or the liberation of the oppressed classes and it is well known that people have defended wars on the basis of justice and social peace. Should we therefore avoid liberty, equality, opposing oppression, seeking justice and social peace?

A third problem with the “argument from atrocities” is that an analogous argument can be used against atheism and secular philosophies. Millions have lost their lives in wars fought in the name of secular ideologies such as Communism — wars far more brutal and total than those that occurred during the Middle Ages. Millions have been killed in socialist states in show-trials every bit as hysterical and rigged as any witch trials were. And, as some medievalists have noted, with irony, the Committee for Public Safety in Enlightenment France was, in numerous respects, much worse than the Inquisition. If the fact that Christians engaged in historical atrocities entails belief in God is false or that religious belief is to be avoided then parity of reasoning entails atheism is false and that secular belief systems should be avoided.

At this point the sceptic will start to make qualifications. One rejoinder is that whilst atheists like Pol Pot, Mao and Stalin committed atrocities, these were not done in the name of atheism or due to their atheist beliefs. Religious atrocities, however, were committed because of religious beliefs.

However, such rejoinders fail. As Peoples explained, Stalin and Pol Pot persecuted religious groups precisely because they were atheists and saw religion as socially pernicious — the very thing people who press the historical atrocities argument are trying to contend. Richard Wurmbrand, a victim of communist persecution in Romania, stated that “communist torturers often said there is no God, no hereafter, no life after death, we can do what we wish.” The fact that atheism was not the motivation for these actions seems to be news to those who actually witnessed them.

So, many atrocities were committed on the basis of atheism. The purported rejoinder also fails due to the fact that many atrocities cited by religious critics were not committed for religious reasons but for secular ones. Christopher Eberle and Terence Cuneo noted in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy that the religious wars of the 17th Century were caused not by the appeal to religious reasons, per se, but rather by the violation of religious freedom. They noted further that even in the 17th Century religious persecution was typically justified on secular grounds,

“When such rights have been violated, the justifications offered, even by religious believers, appeal to alleged requirements for social order, such as the need for uniformity of belief on basic normative issues. One theological apologist for religious repression, for example, writes this: ‘The king punishes heretics as enemies, as extremely wicked rebels, who endanger the peace of the kingdom, which cannot be maintained without the unity of the faith. That is why they are burnt in Spain.”

Medievalist Régine Pernoud argued that heretics were burnt or tortured during the 12th Century due to the revival of Roman Law, which allowed torture to gain a confession and burning as punishment for treason. The torture and burning of heretics had as much to do with ancient Roman legal customs as it did with biblical exegesis. In fact, the Inquisition used torture more sparingly, passed death sentences more rarely and had more humane prisons than most secular courts of the same time. This suggests inquisitors actually moderated already accepted harsh Roman practices. Now, this does not justify such practices but it does question the thesis that religious reasons were the driving motivation for them or the thesis that they would not have occurred if a more secular context had prevailed. In a similar vein the Crusades were originally called to protect pilgrims from attack, to recover annexed territory and to protect the eastern Roman Empire from invasion — all secular reasons that could have been utilised to justify war quite independently of any religious rationale. Was World War II not fought to recover annexed territory, protect innocent people and protect Europe from invasion? How many millions were killed for that?

When these qualifications fail it is contended that not all atheists support these practices. This is true. It is also true that not all religious people support the practices cited by these sceptics. In fact, historically, some of the most important criticisms of religious persecution and defences of religious tolerance, such as those proposed by John Locke and Pierre Bayle, appealed to explicitly theological grounds.

Yale Philosophy Professor, Nicholas Wolterstorff, notes that “many of the social movements in the modern world that have moved societies in the direction of liberal democracy have been deeply and explicitly religious in their orientation.” Wolterstorff cites examples such as the abolitionist, civil rights and other resistance movements as examples.

So the appeal to historical atrocities, on examination, seems often based on a fairly selective analysis of the evidence. The Bin Ladens and Hitlers of this world are clearly dangerous but so too are the Stalins, Pol Pots and secular groups like the Tamil Tigers who pioneered the practice of suicide bombing before Al-Qaeda came on the scene. People fight and kill for a number of reasons; sometimes these are religious, more often they are secular – sometimes both. When people care deeply about something, sometimes they will kill to protect it. Religion is not an exception.

Bin Laden is dead; however, as commentators incessantly tell us, the legacy of religious terror he represents will continue. What also will continue are the prejudices of some secular groups who use his example to stereotype and smear all religions as dangerous and fanatical. It is far easier to kill a terrorist than it is to kill irrational prejudice but at least one can expose it for the shallow line of thought that it is.

I write a monthly column for Investigate Magazine entitled “Contra Mundum.” This blog post was published in the June 2011 issue and is reproduced here with permission. Contra Mundum is Latin for ‘against the world;’ the phrase is usually attributed to Athanasius who was exiled for defending Christian orthodoxy.

Letters to the editor should be sent to:
editorial@investigatemagazine.DELETE.com

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Tags:   · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 41 Comments

41 responses so far ↓

  • I totally agree with the reasoning that if religious people and non-religious people commit crimes, then there is nothing wrong with religion.

    Similarly, if drunk drivers and sober drivers both have accidents (and drinking is involved in a *minority* of accidents), then there is nothing wrong with drinking and driving.

  • Steven,
    Your analogy is flawed, because it takes both the drinking and the driving to cause the accident. I guess you could say that drinking is the religious belief, accidents are the violence, but possibly that driving are those motivating factors in a small number of religions toward violence.

  • Steven, nobody argued that “if religious people and non-religious people commit crimes, then there is nothing wrong with religion.”

    Where did you even get that from? What was pointed out is that if atrocities show that religion should be rejected, then in precisely the same way it shows that atheism should be rejected. In fact we even saw cases cited where atheism was a contributing rationale for the atrocities.

    What you could have said, and this would have been fine, is: “if religious people and non-religious people commit crimes, then religion can’t be rejected just because some religious people commit crimes.”

    Where you got your bizarre argument from is another matter.

  • As for the witch trials, another phenomenon that is often attributed to the supposed pernicious influence of Christian theology, one should be aware that more often than not Christian theologians and pastors argued against belief in witchcraft. This can be seen from the following scholarly contributions:

    Stuart Clark, Protestant Demonology: Sin, Superstition, and Society (c. 1520 – c. 1630), in: Bengt Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen (ed.), Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries, Oxford 1990, pp. 47-81.

    Jens Christian V. Johansen, “Witchcraft, Sin and Repentance: The Decline of Danish Witchcraft Trials”, in: Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 37 (1991/92), pp. 413-423.

    H. C. Erik Midelfort, Witch Hunting in South Western Germany 1562-1684: The Social and Intellectual Foundations, Stanford/Cal. 1972, p. 73.

  • Steven, first straw man arguments don’t count for much. I did not argue that “if religious people and non-religious people commit crimes, then there is nothing wrong with religion.” I argued that if you claim that the fact religious people commit commits shows there is something wrong with religion, then the claim non religious people do must show there is something wrong if non-religion.
    Second, even if I had offered this argument, the argument you provide is disanalogous. For two reasons. First, The claim that a person who holds a religious belief commits a crime. Is not analogous to the claim that a person who gets drunk and drives causes an accident, because there is a verfiable causal relationship between excessive drinking, impaired driving judgement and accidents. There is nothing like this kind of verfied causal link between religious beliefs and commiting crime. Second, the claim that “non religious people commit crimes” and “sober people have accidents” is also disanalogous. Because being sober does not contribute to the accident in the way drinking does. However, in the argument I actually gave secular beliefs did contribute to the acts in the same way religious ones do.

    Third, in fact your argument if it was made analogous to the one I actually made would confirm my point. If for example one could show being sober had the same relationship to accidents and being drunk did, then if one condemns drink driving because of accidents one would have to also condemn sober driving because of accidents. The reason we don’t do this is because they don’t have the same relationship.

    However, the claim “heresy is socially pernicious therefore I should kill heretics” and “religion is socially pernicious therefore I should kill religious people” do have the same relationship to an act of killing. Similarly the claim “ God commanded me to kill X” and the claim “promiting happiness means I should kill X” have the same relationship to killing X.

    When you learn to avoid straw men, and offer actual analogies. Let me know.

  • Excellent article, this will be very handy next time I clash with my atheist ‘buddies’.

    Even if a relationship between Atheism and the atrocities committed in Russia and China is found to be indirect, it is still far easier to link these atrocities to the atheistic world view than it is to pin the sins of the church to the teachings of Christ.
    When arguing against Christianity, is it fair to demand opponents assess whether or not the offenders were even really Christian? It is pretty clear to me that the crusades in particular were at least partially driven by political and economic motivations, to suggest they were the result of following the sermon on the mount seems utterly ridiculous.

  • I saw a study that said only 10% of people that claimed to be Christians have their beliefs integrated into their daily lives and worldview. I think it takes many years/decades to see much change in a Christian, so it is foolish to expect instant maturity. We should expect a little more peaceful behaviour in Christian cultures, not a radically different amount. I’ve been to lots and lots of churches, and is a very low percentage that have attained “christ-likeness”. Luther said that he thought he drowned the “old man”, but that rascal learned to swim. We should be honest that we still have significant flaws after we become Christians and have caused our share of pain in history. However, we would refuse to let the spineless haters that have jumped on the politically correct bandwagon to make us feel we have cause more than our fair share.

  • Matt,

    How about cherem warfare in the OT and the equating of the detestable people groups which Yahweh considered as a snare unto Israel with the Native Americans and the Palestinians in contemporary Jewish teaching and preaching

    See Cotton Mather’s Soldiers Counselled and Comforted

    How do you square away with this?

  • Matt your argument shows both sides are culpable and would suggest that religions or atheism are not the only reason behind violence. I would think selfishness pride power etc would do their fair share without referring to any belief system. However, the argument you refute is not the one typically made. What I most often hear is not that religious violence shows all religions false but rather that religious texts codify violence more so than athiests. While there may be atheist tyrants there is no common atheist manual but there are plenty of religious texts containing ordained violence, hell etc etc. This is not to say that religion always leads to violence but if you are religious you have to be much more careful to avoid fundamentalism and bad interpretations.

  • John, the issue of codified text is really beside the point, because most secular moral theories can be appealed to in a way analagous to religious texts. Utilitarianism entails that its permissible to do any violent act if one maximises happiness. Marxism does explictly call for violence, Kai Neilsen one of the leading defenders of secular ethics defends terrorism as legitimate in certain circumstances. Peter Singer and Michael Tooley defend infanticide, Kantianism allows for just war theory just as much as Thomism does, and so on.

    Moreover, as I note its actually fairly simplistic to say religious violence was due to “fundamentalism”. Fundamentalism is a largely 20th century protestant phenomena and was a political till the 1970’s. Religious atrocities were typically justified as I noted on largely secular grounds.

    I have studied the history of Christian reflection on war, and you simply do not find people defending all out terrorism on the basis of Joshua. You find just war theorising based on general principles which most secular ethicists would accept today.

  • I suppose there are plenty of secular theories that encourage violence but I think the difference is that utilitarianism, Marxism and Kantian texts are not sacred and do not claim to be inspired by God. Belief in these texts or philosophies may be part of the problem, but secularists have the freedom to discard some, revise others and to add where it’s necessary.
    As Christians, of course, we do a little of the same and revise our interpretations frequently but don’t have quite the same freedom.

    “I have studied the history of Christian reflection on war, and you simply do not find people defending all out terrorism on the basis of Joshua. You find just war theorising based on general principles which most secular ethicists would accept today.”

    I’m not the scholar you are in this area but I would prefer to get rid of the Joshua texts altogether to avoid their miss-interpretation. I have heard many a christian (maybe not philosophers) talking about Gods judgement on certain countries at war and there shockers like the printing of bible verses on rifle scopes and bombs in the middle east etc. Here is a shocking example I’m sure we can both agree is rather inappropriate: http://goo.gl/7eWme

    Funnily enough I never struggled with the stories of Joshua until I came here =) Rather I found it difficult to come to terms with the innocent deaths in the flood, the death of Egypt’s first born, the massacre of the bears, the forceful taking of wives for the Benjamites, the death of jobs family etc. Because I can’t just chop out the bits of the bible I don’t like (like an atheist/secularist can their texts) I need to provide and explanation / interpretation for every one of these passages. To be honest, I’m struggling. You are one of a very few trying to provide answers for these questions.

    Unfortunately, until I have these questions answered, I can’t see how there does not remain the danger that, if commanded by God, certain Christians would commit violence. He has asked people to kill before so why not now? Matthew 10:33-35 could be enough for some….

    The fact that atheists could also use secular texts to rationalize violence does not vindicate us Christians.

  • @ John – another example of where a ‘like’ button would be welcome.

  • @ John
    “Rather I found it difficult to come to terms with the innocent deaths in the flood, the death of Egypt’s first born, the massacre of the bears, the forceful taking of wives for the Benjamites, the death of jobs family etc. Because I can’t just chop out the bits of the bible I don’t like (like an atheist/secularist can their texts) I need to provide and explanation / interpretation for every one of these passages.”

    John, given that you say we cant pick and choosethe bits that suite us [and i agree], why so much trouble with the flood story?
    What innocents are you concerned with? To raise that question, surely you are denying the introduction to the story…

    “5The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.” and

    “11Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. 12God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. ”

    surely you are actually doing the very thing you worry about, chopping out bits you dont like. In this case the idea that wickedness was so complete that God could choose to wipe it out.

  • Jeremy,
    You bring up a good point. In the past I struggled with the same questions John is struggling with, so I definitely understand his concern and the difficulty of coming to understand God’s word.

    It’s a difficult situation, because we think of humans as innocent. The baby, the invalid, the “women and children.” Since we think of them as innocent, we move to our next error in thinking that they are entitled to life. Neither is true in the Christian worldview. Life is a gift, and the Lord gives it and can take it away. Furthermore, none is righteous. Even if we were righteous, our righteousness would pale in comparison to God’s eternal righteousness.

    I don’t know if any of you listened to Clay Jones recent interview on Stand to Reason? It was something of a response to Copan the week before. Clay Jones listed out the wickedness of the Canaanites and said that there was nothing to be resolved in the texts, because they weren’t righteous. Having spent years doing study in the ANE, and biblical literature, I know he’s right…but at the heart of it, I know I’m not any better than they were.

    Thus, I’m torn. I understand John’s questions and struggles because I’ve been there. At the same time, I wonder why we ask, “Why them, Lord?” when we should be asking instead, “Why not me, Lord?” None of us (Christians) are deserving of the great gift we’ve been given, both of life now and eternal life with God.

  • John,

    It still seems to me there is special pleading going on here you write
    I suppose there are plenty of secular theories that encourage violence but I think the difference is that utilitarianism, Marxism and Kantian texts are not sacred and do not claim to be inspired by God. Belief in these texts or philosophies may be part of the problem, but secularists have the freedom to discard some, revise others and to add where it’s necessary.

    Here, you suggest the issue is that religious people consider there texts infallible and secularists do not. I think this is false and elaborate why here http://www.mandm.org.nz/2009/11/audi-and-the-infallibility-of-religious-reasons.html. The point I make is that Christians typically consider there interpretations of sacred texts fallible, even if the text itself is. Second, secular ethical theories purport to be based on sound arguments, in logic it’s impossible for a sound argument to have a false conclusion, so the issue of Infallibility applies in both contexts.

    Similarly, theories like Kantianism and Utilitarianism often propound theories whereby the rules they endorse are those that would be endorsed by a fully informed, rational, person who was impartial, which of course is not terribly different from claiming they are endorsed by God. In both cases people propose interpretations of what they think an infallible source such sound reasons, or an ideal observer, or God endorse. If the existence of people defending atrocities by appealing to God discredits theism then atrocities by the other discredits secularism by parity of argument.

    I would prefer to get rid of the Joshua texts altogether to avoid their miss-interpretation. I have heard many a christian (maybe not philosophers) talking about Gods judgement on certain countries at war and there shockers like the printing of bible verses on rifle scopes and bombs in the middle east etc. Here is a shocking example I’m sure we can both agree is rather inappropriate: http://goo.gl/7eWme

    First, was not talking about merely “philosophers” I was referring to mainstream Christian thought on the ethics of war. If you look at Canon law for example it does not justify total genocidal holy wars, it supports just war theory which allows very limited wars fought against combatants only, for limited just causes ( such as defending a country from attack or punishing criminal aggression) so Christians did not typically understand Joshua as a normative standard to follow.

    Second, there is an non sequitur here, you jump from the claim that people claim war is a judgement on a country, to the idea that people are following the literal reading of Joshua which endorses total genocidal war. That simply does not follow, within just war theory many ethicists stated wars could be justified to punish criminals, just as we send the armed offenders in sometimes to ensure criminals are arrested and judged, it does not follow from this that we endorse Genocide. So again this is simply distortion.

    Third, the defences of wholesale killing of non combatants, comes from secular ethics. Utilitarian justifications have been given and are frequently given in the literature today by secular ethicists to defend Churchils firebombing of german cities or the Nuking of Ngasaki and Hiroshima. The whole 50’s to 80’s were dominated my utilitarian defences of threatening total nuclear anihlation of civilians to achieve peace during the cold war, all one needs to do is look at fairly recent events and discussions of them. So again, its highly selective to single religion out as defending war and genocide. Find me a mainstream orthodox Christian thinker who ever defended mass murder of this scale on biblical grounds? I now of plenty of utilitarian type justifications.

    Funnily enough I never struggled with the stories of Joshua until I came here =) Rather I found it difficult to come to terms with the innocent deaths in the flood, the death of Egypt’s first born, the massacre of the bears, the forceful taking of wives for the Benjamites, the death of jobs family etc. Because I can’t just chop out the bits of the bible I don’t like (like an atheist/secularist can their texts)
    Well, you need to re read these texts because, if you read the flood story no innocents were killed the text is explict the opposite is the case and the “forceful” taking of wives was not endorsed or commanded by God, its recorded in a book which functions to illustrate who depraved Isreal was without a king.

    But to the main point, Actually no one secular or Christian can just “chop out” parts of a theory they don’t like, theories often have a coherence and hang together in certain ways certain parts entail and support other parts, and you can’t rationally just ignore logical entailments you don’t like. Here is the rub, one of the the most dominant secular ethical theories around today, one that Sam Harris the beloved new atheists writer appears to advocate is Utilitarianism, this position entails logically that its permissible to wipe out entire civilian populations if doing so brings about a greater good, such as saving even more US lives. In fact, even a moderate non ultiarian theory which allows a deontological threshold which is not absolute allows this. That’s pretty much some of the most influential and dominant secular theories. This can’t be “chopped” out, its an entailment of the theory.

    Unfortunately, until I have these questions answered, I can’t see how there does not remain the danger that, if commanded by God, certain Christians would commit violence. He has asked people to kill before so why not now? Matthew 10:33-35 could be enough for some….

    Well if the question is ,“could” someone claim God supports violence, that’s obvious true. But of course a person “could” claim science endorse’s violence; a person “could” claim anything at all about any ethical theory at all, so what?

    If your worry is that God could actually command it, again I would ask so what, God as understood in a Christian context is an all knowing, all good, perfectly rational person, if a person with these traits actually does command something there cannot be anything wrong with it. God would only command killing in a context where a perfectly good fully informed person would do so, in which case it could not be evil to do so, so there is no problem here.

    So it’s hard to see what the argument here is. Perhaps you can point me to a position in ethics which is such that it’s impossible for someone to appeal to it and claim it supports violence? You’ll be looking a long time.

    As to Matt 10:33-34 please get serious. Can you find any moral theologian representative of a major branch of Christianity who has interpreted this passage to mean one can engage in unjust or genocidal wars? The official stance on war in Catholicism, or Calvinism or Lutheranism is well documented, there really is no excuse for people to engage in straw men.

    Your final comment He has asked people to kill before so why not now? simply is a rhetorical question with little rational basis, the fact someone commanded someone to do something in the past does not entail he must command it to us now. God commanded Abraham to leave Ur in the past does it follow he might command us to leave Ur now? God commanded Jonah to go to Niveh, does it follow we should expect God to command us to go to Niveh and preach, and that if we don’t we’ll be swallowed by a whale?.

    The fact is we do not normally think that occasional commands where God commands an individual on a specific historical occasion to do X means he commands all of us now to X . Something Christian ethicists writing on war have typically noted for centuries.

    In fact many branches of Christianity reject the idea that there can be prophetic messages of this sort after the coming of Christ and the closing of the Canon. So this is simply a bad inference.

    The fact that atheists could also use secular texts to rationalize violence does not vindicate us Christians.
    Well if I had said it was OK for Christians to commit violence because they used secular texts, this point would be valid. But I didn’t. What I pointed out was that claims that Christians did violence in for religious reasons, and that secular views are safe by comparison does not fit the facts.

  • Matt,

    Singer advocated infanticide, based on principles of mercy-killing and probably the utilitarian ethics of war-making does not include slaughter of non-combatant women and children

    This is unlike what Joshua and David did in the OT. Under Yahweh’s orders they slaughtered women and children irregardless of condition and age. Philip Jenkins, stated that compared to the Quran’s charge to Mohammed to spare women and infants from jihad, the OT in general is more blood-thirsty than any religious texts he’s ever read. Even the Gita doesn’t describe Krishna endorsing wholesale slaughter of non-combatants only the cousin-soldiers of the opposing side.

  • Matt you stated that a militant reading of utilitarianism can entail the destruction of a population for the sake of greater good. Can you cite some literature and articles about this? I haven’t myself personally heard of Bentham or Mill arguing this consideration in light of war

    I know the Marxist manifestations of communism and secular fascism can lead people to violence, especially on the former with Karl Marx predicting the violent overthrow of the rich with the proletariat in his class struggle thesis on the Manifesto, whilst Fascism’s violence is directed against people who are deemed useless or non-comformist to statist values characterized in Nazi Germany, but the issue of child-killing has never been properly addressed in these two secular systems. I don’t know how they treat an enemy child.

    In the Biblical system however, they slaughtered even a canaanite infant just so long as it was under the ban of Yahweh, every living thing including livestock must be destroyed. Its that totalizing.

  • “Christians did not typically understand Joshua as a normative standard to follow. ”

    See Cotton Mather’s Soldiers Counselled and Comforted

  • Actually, Nazi Germany did terminate jewish children in their concentration camps, so even fascism can go so far as cheremic religious traditions for the sake of national security

  • “Well, you need to re read these texts because, if you read the flood story no innocents were killed the text is explict the opposite is the case” matt I’m not so sure about this one. Were there not children carried away and drowned here? Fortunately most mainstream Christians don’t take this one literally these days, well not a global flood anyway.
    Anyone who believes that if commanded by god they are justified in killing and carrying out gods judgement is to be feared.

  • I agree with your other point matt… secular beliefs are not necessarily safe. All I’m saying is that I think religious beliefs have their dangers too. I wasn’t saying that modern day Christians were trying to justify genocide rather that they were justifying war by claiming they were carrying out Gods judgement. I believe in just war but not in war solely to carry out Gods judgement. That should be left to god after death.
    Maybe you move in rather rational christian circles online because the arguments you use are good and hold water but I see plenty of Christians talking like this.

    @Jeremy and @GKE
    I suppose you’re right that if we accept these sections stay in, we have to accept that God has the ultimate say in who stays living if evil or not.
    I just don’t understand why God saved all those animals when thousands of children were left to the water.
    But you’re right Jeremy. I’m guilty of chopping things out already. I used to argue vehemently for a literal flood and 6 day creation 6000 years ago but they just don’t stack up. I now believe God created a ‘lived in’ world with fully grown trees, light shining from stars billions of light years away, etc.

    I suppose that I also now think (similar to Matt) that most of the old testament and the violent wars are really just exaggerations of old. Some of them even miss-represent God (as I feel I know Him).

    As you say GKE, we are all guilty in God’s eyes (while I don’t know about inherited original sin anymore) and as such, deserve to die. If I’m killed by a christian who says he is only carrying out the justice of God, how can I complain?

    Frankly that really scares me. God’s message is not something that comes in a letter that can be tabled or countered. I’ve disagreed with many of my friends spiritual choices and supported them when they’ve claimed it was gods leading but there just ain’t no way to objectively know if they were hearing from God or from themselves.

  • John,
    I don’t believe you should be at all troubled if your present-day Christian instincts lead you to question the values the ancient authors attributed to God.

    The Holy Spirit, which Jesus promised to guide us, is a contemporary and future reality, not just a historical one, so we are all learners in this great spiritual adventure.

  • Are those recent quotes of Peron. I would have thought he would have crawled under rock and stayed there – something that Dirty Darren should consider doing as well.

  • Alvin, regarding Cotton Mather, I have not read the book and have heard conflicting claims about his theology. However, I would point out that this is not the standard reformed view, the Westminister confession of faith allows for only defensive wars. Mather held odd views about America being a new Isreal in special covenant with God which would not be orthodox or normative in the just war tradition. Moreover, even if America does have this status ( which it does not) its still not clear the analogy holds. Where the Puritans promised america 400 years earlier and told to not invade until the Indians had had time to repent, had they also had a prophetic utterance, from a man who parted the sea, could cause plaques to strike the brittish empire so badly that the king was forced to release the Puritans, I doubt it.

  • Alvin, regarding utilitarianism and war, see the literature on the bombing of Hiroshima. Also look at Micheal Walzer’s defence of Churchill’s bombing of civilian centres in his “just and unjust wars” this text is a standard text book in the ethics of war. It was the prescribed text I had at Waikato University. Walzer argues that the standard just war criteria should be ammeneded to allow for a ultitarian overide. You can also read Kai Neilsens’ stuff on terrorism, Neilson is the standard author secularists cite as a critic of religious ethics.

    Singer’s support of infanticide goes beyond mercy killing and it is based on ulititarian grounds. Other leading atheists like Micheal Tooley and numerous other defend the same conclusion, often explicitly on atheist grounds, for example they argue that we should discard intiutions based on false Christian and theistic understandings of the world, and that when we do there is nothing intiuitively wrong with infanticide. None monotheistic cultures widely practised it.

  • @John
    I come from a completely different background and I think that often shapes our understanding of things. The churches I grew up in until I was 16 accepted theistic evolution without allowing for any other real options. My university taught me “biblical studies” from mainline Christians and unbelievers. During my first degree I was a rather convinced open theist, who saw most of the OT as mythical.

    Now I’m a Reformed evangelical who holds to inerrancy and the historicity of most everything I previously rejected. My struggles came from my studies in the ANE and the realization that events just like those described in Joshua were common. At the same time, I realized that hyperbolic language was not too uncommon in the ancient ANE either. Thus, although I’m still not firmly convinced, I think Matt (following others) makes a good case concerning Joshua using literary conventions to describe warfare that would have been understood by the original audience not to have entailed all of the individuals included.

    That doesn’t mean these battles never happened, and I’m pretty sure Matt agrees that the battles were historical. It just means that the “total destruction” language may have been a literary convention that nobody took literally (such as my saying that the teacher “grilled” the student after class for a mistake she made…I sure hope she didn’t literally grill anyone…you would never take that literally).

    But if we leave things at the understanding of the original audience, then we may be missing what the Holy Spirit desires to teach us. Over and beyond the original audience, there is a canonical audience. The book is written in such a way that the book as a whole communicates a message. It fits into the OT in such a way that the OT communicates a message and ultimately into the Bible in such a way that the Bible communicates a message. We need to interpret the book in light of each of these different levels and see what they can tell us.

  • “Well, you need to re read these texts because, if you read the flood story no innocents were killed the text is explict the opposite is the case” matt I’m not so sure about this one. Were there not children carried away and drowned here? Fortunately most mainstream Christians don’t take this one literally these days, well not a global flood anyway.

    John, the text explicitly states God sent the flood because all the inhabitants of the earth were wicked. Noah is spared because he is the only one who was righteous. So the story does not claim God wiped out innocent people. It claims God discriminated wiping out the wicked and saving the innocent. That’s what the text affirms.

    Were there not children carried away and drowned here?

    What I think your doing is arguing that if God in fact in history had wiped out all the inhabitants of earth, then he would have to have wiped out children and are in fact innocent.

    Note this is an inference based on (a) assuming the Genre of the text is intended to be a historically account of what occurs (b) assuming that the text is accurate in claim that God in fact wiped out the whole world and (c) claiming the part about all people being wicked is mistaken.

    It seems to me there are several possible responses here. Regarding (a) there is a body of evangelical scholarship which would argue that the text is a mythical polemic, it takes a well known ANE myth and rewrites it in a way that critques the babylonian theology of the time. Several ANE myths tell a very similar story about a great flood, except in there version the gods send the flood because humans are noisey and the hero escapes in an ark because of favourism of one god. The genesis story then rewrites the story precisely in a way to emphasis God does not arbitrarily wipe people out but is rather concerned with justice, he hence wipes out people because they are guilty and spares them because they are not. On this reading the text actually is a polemic against the idea of a God who genocides millions of innocent people.

    Regarding (b) and (c) this seems arbitrary. I don’t know any reason why someone would assume the claim the flood occurred was accurate and the claim that everyone was evil would not be. Fundamentalists would accept the whole account as literally true and sceptics would reject the whole account. So I really don’t know what reading the the text your responding to. You can’t decide to accept parts which are nasty are authoritative and parts which are not aren’t and then claim, hey look the text is nasty when I do this. That makes no real sense to me.

    The point is, if the account is historically accurate it affirms everyone was wicked. If its not historically accurate but a myth, then it’s a myth about a world where everyone is wicked and only the innocent is spared. The claim the text therefore teaches God killed the innocent seems to me to lack plausibility.

  • @ Matt

    “The point I make is that Christians typically consider there interpretations of sacred texts fallible, even if the text itself is. Second, secular ethical theories purport to be based on sound arguments, in logic it’s impossible for a sound argument to have a false conclusion, so the issue of Infallibility applies in both contexts.”

    I’m not sure if I’ve misunderstood you but I think your statement on secularism does seem to be wrong. If it were true then no laws or morals would change as the logical argument arriving at the conclusions giving rise to those laws and morals would be unchanged.

    Yet laws and morals do change.

    Please let me know if I have indeed misunderstood.

  • Thanks for the comment GKE.
    It’s true that most of these passages, once explored in a little more depth, reveal a more complex situation than at first reading.
    Here’s a blurb about the bears which makes it sound a little more reasonable. http://www.christianthinktank.com/qmeanelisha.html
    So Elisha wasn’t violent at all, but the question remains as to why god would use this sort of solution and not the solution used for Jesus when he walked through the crowd threatening to throw him off the cliff.
    I’d be interested to know if you also consider the more sciencey parts of the bible to be literal or not, such as the flood, and why?

    @Peter. I do believe that the holy spirit will guide and I also believe that gods word is spoken not just through the bible but through his creation. As such I am confident that there is a solution to every problem – I just wish that the word was a little more definite and there was less disagreement on what it actually was with respect to many things ie. the war in iraq/afghanistan

  • Well, I’m not sure what the “sciency” parts of the Bible are, but I hold to a historical flood. Worldwide? I don’t know, because the text never says (I know the arguments both ways). But even this story isn’t about the science behind flooding “the land,” it’s about people being overcome by wickedness and God’s just actions toward their total corruption. It’s about Noah’s obedience and finding “favor” in the eyes of the Lord. It’s about God’s covenant with Noah afterward.

    The other topics are interesting, but the text wasn’t preserved so that we could have information about the historical event of a flood. The story was preserved to teach us about God’s righteous judgment against wickedness and Noah’s obedience. Furthermore, it’s part of a greater narrative (Gen 1-11) that teaches about the spread of sin and prepares the way for God’s covenant with Abram in Gen 12ff. Beyond that, it tells a brief portion of the greater narrative concerning the message of Genesis as a whole.

    I think the same types of things about Genesis 1-4. Did God create the world from nothing? Yeah. Did God form Adam and Eve in the garden? Yeah. Is the point how God did these things? Not in the least. Genesis 1 deals primarily with assigning function to the Creation looking forward to God’s presence in the tabernacle (around the time Moses would have written down the story), and beyond that to the temple/exile. I think by not reading the texts with their theological intention in mind, we might try to make them say things that they don’t intend to say or misread them completely.

    The book is long and pretty repetitive at parts, but I would highly recommend John Sailhamer’s “The Meaning of the Pentateuch.” I’d also recommend his book on Genesis called “Genesis Unbound” if you can find a copy for cheap. Another good perspective of how these things fit together from a slightly different perspective would be Bruce Waltke’s “Old Testament Theology.”

    Figuring these things out takes time and patience. Furthermore, we have to humbly realize that we might not figure it all out. When dealing with an infinite God, we finite humans can only grasp so much. Blessings in your journey.

  • Another excellent book that is shorter and more for lay people is Christopher Wright’s “The God I Don’t Understand.” He’s an Old Testament scholar, but also a pastor and head of John Stott’s ministry worldwide.

  • Paul, I don’t think my comments commit me to the claim that secular mores never change.
    Again, there is a simple distinction, between the claim that a sound argument cannot have a false conclusion. Which is correct as a matter of logic, and the claim that humans never mistakenly think an argument is sound when it is not.
    Secularists would agree that sometimes people make mistakes in reasoning and as a result need to revise there opinions, just as Christians agree that people make mistakes in interpreting a text, or reasoning from it to various applications. This no more contradicts belief that Gods word is infallible any more than it commits secularists to the claim, logically absurd claim, that a sound argument can have a false conclusion.

  • @ Matt = thanks for that. So what is the motor for the change ? In religious circles is the Biblical text being interpreted differently and if so on what basis ? I can see how there can be a motor for change in a secular worldview but I’m not sure where it comes from within a religious worldview if the actual text dies not change.

  • Thanks for the references,

    Regarding Singer, he suggested we should terminate infants with life-threatening and potentially debilitating disease lest they suffer in their adulthood, along with the cost of caring a permanently non-contributing citizen; I take it the latter aspect is more cost-benefit utlitarian, while the former is more humanitarian. Are you familiar with his philosophy on infanticide? I don’t think he’s saying we should abort babies on the fly, only if they have cephalocaudal syndromes or brain-dead conditions, is euthanizing them ethically permissible.

  • Matt,

    Regarding Mather’s theology, he was just using pesher-like exegesis of double-meanings and allusions; Matthew equated Christ with Israel in “Out of Egypt, I called My Son” But the original passage, it was Israel “When Israel was a child, I loved him”

    Mather was simply using hermeneutics to equate the conquest narrative to their own experiences with American Natives, since the Indians were massacring the colonist wives and children; Can you show me where he got his theology wrong?

  • Alvin
    I am quite familiar with Singer’s views on infanticide.
    I think your incorrect on his position, his support for infanticide is far more broad than the cases you mention.

    In Practical Ethics, Singer takes the view that infants have no preferences to continue existing and so killing an infant for any reason does not wrong it or violate its rights because it has no right to life. A A child in fact, on his view has no more right to life than a pig or a cow does. Instead, its wrong only if it goes against the desires and preferences of adults, such as the child’s parent. He notes that in cases of severe disability the parents may not want to keep the child.

    But then Singer applies this notion to much milder disabilities, and defects withy his notion of replacability. He notes that if a parent of a child kill it the parents can replace this child by having another. So if the children have a child which is disabled, they can kill it and replace it with another non disabled child which they could not have had if they had kept the disabled one, hence utilitarian considerations favour killing a child.
    In fact Singer is quite candid that he thinks killing and infant is not terribly different from killing a fetus and infanticide is simply a consequence of accepting abortion.

    Singer is not alone on this either, I could rattle off half a dozen secular ethicists who take similar views, support for infanticides permissibility is actually quite common in the secular ethics literature. Something freethinker organisations are strangely silent about when they talk about infant sacrifice.

  • thanks for the clarification;
    did Singer say that a baby animal is worth more than a disabled infant in his practical ethics? how about Mather’s theology and what I talked about earlier? What’s your take on that?

  • Matt, I’m still waiting for your response
    If you’re busy, can you direct me to someone who has a reply to Mather’s exegesis

  • Alvin,
    Matt did respond to your statements about Cotton Mather. See Matt’s comment from June 11th, 2:32pm.
    -Neil

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